Recently some retailers have introduced mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) service in which a store employee meets a customer somewhere on the sales floor and uses a handheld device (e.g., phone or tablet) to create an invoice, transact a payment step (e.g., using the customer's credit card), create a receipt (usually electronic), and send details of the sale to the store's backend system for processing (e.g., updating the store's sales totals and perpetual inventory databases).
EAS systems are well known in the art and are used for inventory control and to prevent theft and similar unauthorized removal of articles from a controlled area. Typically, in such systems a system transmitter and a system receiver are used to establish a surveillance zone which must be traversed by any articles being removed from the controlled area.
An EAS security tag is affixed to each article and includes a marker or sensor adapted to interact with a signal being transmitted by the system transmitter into the surveillance zone. For systems using acousto-magnetic EAS tags, a frequency of 58 kHz is used to establish the surveillance zone. This interaction causes a further signal to be established in the surveillance zone which further signal is received by the system receiver. Accordingly, upon movement of a tagged article through the surveillance zone, a signal will be received by the system receiver, identifying the unauthorized presence of the tagged article in the zone.
In an mPOS retail system, checkout will be performed by mobile devices, for example a smartphone or tablet device incorporating the necessary software. If is required to deactivate the EAS at a stationary location, for example, at a stationary point of sale, the benefits of mPOS may be hampered. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide the EAS tag deactivation such that it is associated with the mobile device utilized for the mPOS checkout.
Prior art deactivators are corded (i.e. not mobile) or too large and heavy to be used in a mPOS system. Previous cordless products were much larger and designed to be standalone. For example, many conventional deactivators require a large high-voltage capacitor and a large coil antenna, which translates into a large, bulky and heavy deactivator. The weight, cost and volume of such a deactivation solution limits the portability and usability the device. Further, the large energy requirement of the device eliminates the possibility of powering the unit with a battery or other small power source. As such, conventional deactivators that are battery operated require large heavy batteries, thereby further increasing the size and weight of the device.
Another type of conventional deactivator uses a magnetic field produced by a pair of permanent magnets that are spun around by an electric motor (such as a DC motor) to deactivate the EAS tag or article. Since the DC motor itself is powered using a magnetic field, this arrangement requires the use of two separate and independent magnetic fields that must be maintained. This increases the complexity and the number of parts of the system as well as the size and power requirements.
Thus, a need has arisen to overcome the problems with the prior art and more particularly for a more efficient, lightweight and user-friendly deactivator for EAS tags or articles useable with a mPOS system.